I’m writing a script at the moment, which I sometimes like to call “word arranging” or “typing” - takes some of the pressure off.
“Writer’s block” is never on the menu, I don’t believe in it.
Sure, there’s good days and bad days, as there is in any creative endeavor but an actual block? I call bullshit. Some ideas just take a little longer.
A few things I like to think about when I’m arranging words:
1) How much fun this will be for the audience to watch.
2) How much fun this will be for the actors to perform.
3) How much fun this will be to shoot and edit.
On the page, now, writing is a playground. It has to be.
Later on, when I am pitching to actors out of my league who will read this script, that’s when there’s gotta be story and character and arcs and structure and dialogue.
Now, when it’s just me, alone building the story, that’s when it’s play.
I make an Indie TV series called “Vampire Mob.”
Why don’t I call Vampire Mob a “webseries”?
It’s not because I’m ashamed of being on the web, which is one rebuttal I received - that’s just fucking stupid.
It’s not because I really want to work in network TV and I’m using the show to somehow “break into the industry.” I don’t and I’m not. If I wanted to work in TV, I wouldn’t waste a millisecond working on anything but that goal.
Here’s the very simple reason.
Deb Mozer watching Vampire Mob in Los Angeles directly from YouTube on her television using an XBox.
It’s easy to explain.
Indie TV is television made independent of a network distributed worldwide via the Internet.
“What channel is it on, Joe?” (which you have to say aloud with a whiny voice)
What channel is Netflix on, asshole?
Charlotte Widdows watches Vampire Mob in the United Kingdom on her television directly from YouTube using a Playstation3.
Netflix and Hulu will be making their own series and guess which channel you will watch it on - the Internet.
“If you call yourself Indie TV you are competing with network television.”
Dude, when it comes to the real estate of people’s time, video games, tv shows, movies, ebooks, twitter, kitten videos and porn are all competing for people’s time. There’s a content tsunami headed to the Internet and there’s already too much to watch as it is.
SAG New Media signed over 1,800 signatories last year. That’s 1,800 shows, plus all the shows that are made under AFTRA’s new media contract, plus all the shows made with no union at all.
Welcome to the terrordome.
I shot 125 pages with 22 actors over two seasons without a network.
Many of those actors are award winners and folks from shows like “The Simpsons,” “The Sopranos,” “Criminal Minds,” “Boardwalk Empire” and “Parks and Recreation.”
You can watch “Vampire Mob” on TELEVISION directly from YouTube using an Xbox, a PS3, a Tivo and Blue-Ray players made by Sony and others.
That’s why I call “Vampire Mob” Indie TV, because it is.
Dona Strohbehn streaming Vampire Mob through an XBox and watching it on a 120-inch projection screen.
There was the day we did the lighting tests for the opening scene…
And we also had to test the smoke machine!
Then there was the day we were actually going to shoot the opening scene…
And then we got rained out…
And then there was the day we actually shot the opening scene, which was also Chad Wood’s birthday!
Here’s a view of the scene with Aldo from the roof!
Here’s a little set hangout…
Hanging out in the make up department…
And then there was the night we shot with a very shiny car…
The great part about editing this show is that I get to rewrite myself!
If you read just part of the first page of the script and watch the finished product below, you will see I rewrote myself from the get-go.
Why did I change my own precious, perfect writing that could not possibly be flawed? Because it made the story better.
I rewrote the opening on set while we were shooting, for a couple reasons, one being the cops.
I had stills of the placement of the Mustang Don walks away from at the end of episode six in season one. The problem was to get that position again we would have to be very close to a main street where there are regular appearances of the cops (We didn’t have a permit).
On paper, I wanted that one-shot camera move out of the car and up to Don and the injured man on the ground. I could see the clock speeding up, the planes flying overhead and how much we needed to cover with only one camera operating (me operating it) - that was going to be hard to pull off.
If you look at the wide shots in the opening scene, note how the cars are parked. That’s to block the view from the street to our shooting location. Like a car blockade!
Here’s what I decided, on the spot: I was going to have the audio of the scene play in black. So that’s all we did, recorded John Colella’s lines with no accompanying video.
I killed, on the spot, all the shots going from the car interior to the outside. I knew it would take too much screen time.
I did, however, shoot a ton of takes running from one car to the gunpoint scene. They were really cool shots. I also have all these other really cool shots. They all took way too long so I cut them.
In post, I was thinking about the person who watches season one and season two at once and the shock of going from 10-year old standard definition video cameras to what we used to shoot season two, the Canon 5D, which shoots in 1080p HD.
There are three flashes of a car interior accompanying the gunshots. Those shots are actually from last year, last season, the last scene. And they are standard definition from our old camera.
My intention was to use the black in episode one of season two as a way to give a viewer a little time to adjust.
I cut a quick sequence and one line from the episode and I also extended where I had episode one ending, it actually ends later than I intended, which in turn made episode two do the same.
There’s a few other things I changed, but I’ll save that for next time…
